RocketBlocks

RocketBlocks is an online platform that helps students prepare for consulting case interviews. It was built by former McKinsey, BCG and Bain consultants to help students build the skills necessary to succeed in interviews. RocketBlocks has official partnerships with top MBA programs like Columbia, Cornell, UC Berkeley Haas and more.

All Posts by RocketBlocks

St. Regis Hotels. Cross country business class flights. Lavish
dinners. Advising on strategy for Fortune 500 companies. It all
sounds glamorous! And anytime someone asks me what life was like at
BCG, they've often got an image that's driven by a few of the
aforementioned items already firmly cemented in their head.
So the question everyone asks is: is life at McKinsey, BCG and Bain
really as glamorous as it sounds? The quick summary is that, as
glamorous as some parts of the job might...
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A case interview with McKinsey is an exciting, but daunting,
prospect. After all, it means you'll be solving business problems
in real time with an accomplished consultant from the same firm
that launched the careers of Sheryl Sandberg (COO of Facebook),
Sundar Pichai (CEO of Google) and James McNerney (CEO of
Boeing). Given the challenge, it's no doubt that candidates
spend countless hours honing their analytical skills in advance of
their case interviews. But the case interview is only...
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What does Serena Williams' serve have to do with the toughest job
interview style out there? A lot. In today's post on mastering the
case interview, we're going to unpack what the case interview
really is, the core skills it tests and why the best way to prepare
is shockingly similar to how Serena practices every day. The
case interview success story If you rewind fifty years from today,
the case interview would barely register on the radar of job
interviews. But a lot has changed....
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The number one mistake candidates make when answering this question
is translating the question to something akin to, "Tell me
everything you've done in your professional career in chronological
order." You can approach the question this way, and-if you've
got a tight, coherent articulation of it-it can even work. Most of
the time though, it results in a bloated, rambling, uncompelling
picture of your accomplishments even if you've done a lot of
impressive things. There is a better way:...
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In this post, we share three interview communication tips from
Genelle Kahan, a former Bain & Co. Manager who spent nine years
at Bain in their San Francisco and Boston offices. During her
tenure as a management consultant, Kahan headed up the East Coast
undergrad recruiting efforts, conducted over three case hundred
interviews and was a key member of Bain's retail practice.
According to Kahan, because consulting is often extremely
quantitative and analyti
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Regardless of whether you're interviewing with McKinsey, BCG or
Bain, one thing will be consistent: they'll want to see you
demonstrate leadership, collaboration and drive. In this final post
on the key skills consulting firms test for, we will cover what
exactly the elite firms are looking for and provide the context of
why they care about these skills so much. Before jumping in, let's
quickly recap the skills we've already covered in this series:
Analytical skills: problem...
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Communication is, without doubt, the most underrated skill of the
consulting interview. Here's the crazy thing: most candidates don't
even realize they will be explicitly evaluated on it! Indeed, many
soft skills are critical for success in consulting interviews. But
communication is the "building block" soft skill because firms,
rightly so, see it as an enabler for other skillsets they also care
about like leadership and collaboration. Before jumping in though,
let's quickly recap where...
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"Ok, now that you've got a structure in place, let's dive in. Your
client operates in a $34B global market, maintains a ~12% market
share and earned a 23.2% profit margin last year. How much profit
did our client earn last year?" The above is a prototypical
case interview mental math exercise. If you're preparing for case
interviews, you need to be ready to shred problems like that, as
well as any infinite permutations of it. Before we jump into
discussing the skills necessary to conquer...
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"Ok, your client is a large, multi-national…" This opening sentence
is enough to strike fear into the hearts of many extremely talented
undergraduates and graduates. Case interviews with firms like
McKinsey, BCG and Bain can be a daunting proposition! As a result,
candidates getting ready for case interviews prepare extensively.
They read books. They watch video tutorials. They do a ton
(sometimes hundreds!) of mock interviews with friends and peers.
This instinct, to prepare diligently...
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We've saved the best for last in this 3-part guide to doing mental
math in interviews: the vaunted market sizing question. (Part 1 was
on basic tips and frameworks, and part 2 was on calculating growth
rates). While every consulting recruiting process is a little
different, market sizing questions are one of the incontrovertible
truths-they always come up! Again, this makes perfect se
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